But only if they promise me that I will be packed in so tight they will need a crowbar to get us out at the end, preferably packed in between a hausfrau in a mumu and a 500 lb dude wearing a sweaty tank top and shorts, you know for that full airline experience...

Am I too early/late for all the Internet Aviation Experts who have given the matter all of 2 seconds of thought before writing why the engineers at airbus who make careers thinking about such things, even if some of this is speculative at this point, are full of it or whatever?

Airlines could be saving fuel and making less noise within the next few years.

Sorry, but for the foreseeable future, that's guff too. Yes, NASA and Boeing have done a little preliminary work on BWBs (although that image is a PopSci rendering from the mid-1990s or before), but currently they have a raft of obstacles to production, not least of which is customer acceptance of an aircraft where you are nowhere near a window. They also have pressurization issues, stability issues, discomfort issues (the further you get from the center of the plane the more motion you'll feel in turns), evacuation issues (the less tube-shaped the plane is, the harder it is to evacuate in an orderly manner), and airport infrastructure isn't designed to accommodate BWB aircraft, among others.

Bomb Head Mohammed:Am I too early/late for all the Internet Aviation Experts who have given the matter all of 2 seconds of thought before writing why the engineers at airbus who make careers thinking about such things, even if some of this is speculative at this point, are full of it or whatever?

Some of the folks at Airbus also make careers out of getting feel-good, my-aren't-we-forward-thinking publicity.

balisane:That sounds like a buttload of stress on the airplanes. Not sure I'd trust a discount carrier with that kind of engineering or maintenance.

Not necessarily. You've missed the point of this so called catapult system. It isn't intended to accelerate the planes in a short running strip, as employed in aircraft carriers. It is employed to accelerate the planes in a regular air strip, to avoid relying entirely on the plane's thrusters and therefore spend a buttload of fuel just to get it off the runway. With this, fuel is saved and the plane's service life is improved.

Airlines could be saving fuel and making less noise within the next few years.

Sorry, but for the foreseeable future, that's guff too. Yes, NASA and Boeing have done a little preliminary work on BWBs (although that image is a PopSci rendering from the mid-1990s or before), but currently they have a raft of obstacles to production, not least of which is customer acceptance of an aircraft where you are nowhere near a window. They also have pressurization issues, stability issues, discomfort issues (the further you get from the center of the plane the more motion you'll feel in turns), evacuation issues (the less tube-shaped the plane is, the harder it is to evacuate in an orderly manner), and airport infrastructure isn't designed to accommodate BWB aircraft, among others.

The difference is that NASA hasn't given up on the idea.

Where Airbus is going to stop at some CGI and a press release, NASA has continued to work on the BWB (if only at a meandering pace) to try and resolve these problems. Because, if the peak oil alarmists are right, the price of fuel is never going down. Airlines will become dependent on expensive substitutes and the only way to crack a profit will be in fuel efficiency.Once airlines come to terms with this, I doubt the man who cut three inches off your legroom and doubled your baggage fees is going to give a damn if you get a window seat.

/Granted that the work has to continue in the name of "Reducing emissions" rather than saving fuel./Which is because no one currently cares about buying better aircraft even when the technology is at hand.

gweilo8888: Bomb Head Mohammed: Am I too early/late for all the Internet Aviation Experts who have given the matter all of 2 seconds of thought before writing why the engineers at airbus who make careers thinking about such things, even if some of this is speculative at this point, are full of it or whatever?Some of the folks at Airbus also make careers out of getting feel-good, my-aren't-we-forward-thinking publicity.This "research" came from those folks.

As someone who has experienced the thrill of an assualt landing (Looks something like this) I say go for it. It would be fun to watch the "OMG I'M GONNA FARKING DIE" look on the face of all the noobs. (same look I had on my face the first time.)

Steep takeoffs are the future? I guess I'm one of the few people that remembers what a full performance 757 takeoff is like.

Also, stupid Airbus... Approach angle has nothing to do with roll out distance. You can't make a plane stop more quickly by diving at the ground faster... well, unless you forget to flare. If you are flying a 3 degree glideslope or a 45 degree glideslope, eventually you have to orient the plane to the runway, at which time you damn well better be going just above stall speed or bad things happen. Since stall speed at landing attitude will always be the same given similar aircraft weights, it doesn't matter what angle you were flying at shortly beforehand. Same stall speed means same aircraft speed means same stopping distance.

Airlines could be saving fuel and making less noise within the next few years.

Sorry, but for the foreseeable future, that's guff too. Yes, NASA and Boeing have done a little preliminary work on BWBs (although that image is a PopSci rendering from the mid-1990s or before), but currently they have a raft of obstacles to production, not least of which is customer acceptance of an aircraft where you are nowhere near a window. They also have pressurization issues, stability issues, discomfort issues (the further you get from the center of the plane the more motion you'll feel in turns), evacuation issues (the less tube-shaped the plane is, the harder it is to evacuate in an orderly manner), and airport infrastructure isn't designed to accommodate BWB aircraft, among others.

Bah, that's just reality. Way South is a Space Nutter, living in his own little reality-distortion field. The more fantastical and delusional the idea, the more he thinks it's real.

The slightest CGI, the merest shred of an idea is the same as an engineering blueprint with a parts list...

MythDragon:As someone who has experienced the thrill of an assualt landing (Looks something like this) I say go for it. It would be fun to watch the "OMG I'M GONNA FARKING DIE" look on the face of all the noobs. (same look I had on my face the first time.)

Yeah, that is a lot of fun, innit? It's like a really big roller coaster drop, except with no rails and the potential of someone trying to kill you. I miss that.

maggoo:There's a lot of airbus FUD in here, but I would like to call your attention to 2012's list of commercial craft incidents, where there are zero incidents involving airbus planes and two involving boeing planes. 2011's list of commercial craft incidents includes 8 incidents involving boeing planes, and zero incidents involving airbus planes. 2010's list of commercial craft incidents includes 5 for boeing and 4 for airbus.

So, I suspect that you don't piss on boeing because you can't figure out a clever word that rimes with boeing.

Airbus does some scary stuff. Like change the joystick into a little mousepad like control. Stuff that changes 50, 60 years of aviation in the name of a sales gimmick. Boeing wants the pilot to have the final say, while Airbus thinks it should be the plane's computer. I disagree fundamentally with that.

I'll stick with American built, thanks. Though those Canadian Bombardiers that are going to compete with the 737 are going to be interesting.

Click Click D'oh:Steep takeoffs are the future? I guess I'm one of the few people that remembers what a full performance 757 takeoff is like.

Also, stupid Airbus... Approach angle has nothing to do with roll out distance. You can't make a plane stop more quickly by diving at the ground faster... well, unless you forget to flare. If you are flying a 3 degree glideslope or a 45 degree glideslope, eventually you have to orient the plane to the runway, at which time you damn well better be going just above stall speed or bad things happen. Since stall speed at landing attitude will always be the same given similar aircraft weights, it doesn't matter what angle you were flying at shortly beforehand. Same stall speed means same aircraft speed means same stopping distance.

Actually I consider myself a futurist.I embrace all kinds of technology, not just the ones that will benefit me personally.

As far as flying wings and lifting bodies being unrealistic, its a technology that's been pursued since the Horton brothers almost unleashed the days equivalent of a stealth fighter into the WW2 Sky. The problem is that they aren't stable platforms. Fly by wire removes that as a concern.

The blended wing body is an attempt to get more payload into an efficient body.The argument against it is that they are ugly and inconvenient.

/Its an argument that I doubt will last very long when Bio fuels become the standard./The airport machinery will adapt if you're saving thousands of dollars per flight.

Bomb Head Mohammed:Am I too early/late for all the Internet Aviation Experts who have given the matter all of 2 seconds of thought before writing why the engineers at airbus who make careers thinking about such things, even if some of this is speculative at this point, are full of it or whatever?